Sustainability News

Ben Ruddell, a senior sustainability scientist and assistant professor of engineering at Arizona State University, is part of a team using data to develop models for urban microclimates. A microclimate is a small atmospheric zone where the climate differs from the surrounding area, and can range in size from a single garden to neighborhood. Microclimates within a city are affected by a myriad of factors, such as shade, vegetation, moisture and building materials. A model that can predict the effects of changes made to microclimates can help us better engineer them for human health and comfort.

Ruddell's team is working with Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER) project to observe microclimates in neighborhoods throughout Phoenix and build a database. The data is then used for modeling that will help to engineer healthier, more comfortable and more efficient cities. For example, homeowners choosing between landscaping options can weigh the temperature-reducing effect of lawns and trees against the amount of water they require. In tackling this enormous task, the team hopes to create a system that allows for better decision-making on both individual and municipal scales.

As part of the state's sustainability plans, a report on water reuse in Arizona and how to best delegate effluent was released by Arizona State University's Decision Center for a Desert City (DCDC). "Arizona Horizon" host Ted Simons interviewed DCDC Co-Director and Senior Sustainability Scientist Dave White, who co-authored the report.

White shared that the aim of the report is to continue and stimulate conversation in the policy community about issues critical to the future of water in our state. "What we're seeing is the potential for increased competition and cost for municipal effluent into the future," White said. "We want people to have an open, transparent dialogue about what the best uses of this effluent are."

Watch the interview here.

Through the Global Sustainability Studies Program, School of Sustainability student Chad Sharrard studied the cultural element of sustainable development in the Andes region of Ecuador. Over the course of the summer, he gathered that development requires an understanding of what matters most to the people of a specific place.

After seeing the numerous stakeholders involved in sustainable development in the Andes, Sharrard gained a better understanding of why decisions are sometimes the result of economic and ethical considerations rather than environmental ones. Being immersed in another culture also provided him with an opportunity to apply what he had learned from textbooks and PowerPoints to a real-world situation. He feels that he will better retain these lessons now that they are tied to his memories of Ecuador.

CAP graduate student Tom Volo was named Engineering Student of the Year at the Greater Phoenix Area 2014 Engineers Week awards ceremony. Tom’s Ph.D. work focuses on urban landscape irrigation and on understanding optimal water application rates, which has tremendous practical application in the Phoenix region. He used data from CAP’s North Desert Village experiment in his Master’s research and has published these findings in Ecohydrology.

CAP scientist Sharon Harlan and her colleagues at Arizona State University were featured in an article in High Country News discussing the Phoenix urban heat island. The article presents some of the tradeoffs in technical solutions to ameliorating the heat island.

How will Phoenix’s future urban spaces emerge, and what might these scenarios mean for environmental, economic and social sustainability? Senior Sustainability Scientist Darren Petrucci and School of Sustainability alumnus Rider Foley presented one tool for answering such questions at the “New Tools for Science Policy” breakfast seminar, hosted by ASU’s Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO) in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 28.

Their technology works by mapping Phoenix’s trajectory and determining how it came to be the city it currently is.  “From there, we could begin to extrapolate where the urban form and growth might go,” says Petrucci. Keeping in mind the forces that underlie technology’s interplay with urban evolution - including competing desires like economic growth, access to clean water, security, and the sustainable use of natural resources – they created visualization scenarios in video format. These scenarios encourage viewers to consider their current decisions and how they may impact the future.

Thomas Volo, a doctoral student in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, was one of two ASU engineers to be honored at a Feb. 20 event.

Volo, who is a graduate research assistant with the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER) project, studies urban landscape irrigation and the ecohydrology of desert cities. His research uses numerical modeling and eddy covariance techniques to investigate the impacts of landscape irrigation on urban surface energy and soil moisture fluxes. He seeks to conserve urban water use through improved scheduling for residential irrigation.

Volo was recognized at the Greater Phoenix Area 2014 Engineers Week awards ceremony as the Engineering Student of the Year. He was honored along with engineering professor Keith Hjelmstad, who was named Engineering Educator of the Year.

Sethuraman "Panch" Panchanathan discusses energy research in his latest column in The Arizona Republic. Panchanathan is the senior vice president for ASU's Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development.

Panchanathan describes the importance of developing and advancing sustainable and affordable sources of energy. He provides examples of how ASU researchers are working in related areas, such as renewable fuels from algae and cyanobacteria, solar panels and photovoltaics, as well as the work happening with policymakers to ensure that our legal, social and economic systems can support renewable energy solutions.

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Building a more functional conversation among researchers, policymakers, citizens and industrial leaders is critical to address the global challenge of climate change, argued panelists at the “Rescuing Climate Policy” panel at ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability on Feb. 5. Kristen Hwang, a journalism student at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, reported on the panel for Slate magazine’s Future Tense channel.

At the event, panelists argued that to prevent environmental wars and global unrest, the international community needs to work together to aggressively combat climate change and remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

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By Lindsay Gaesser, SDA Media Relations

TEMPE, Ariz.—The Arizona State men’s basketball team wasted no effort in its double-overtime win against in-state rival Arizona on Feb. 14, and neither did the fans.  As a part of Sun Devil Athletics’ Zero Waste Initiative, a bipartisan crowd of 10,754 at Wells Fargo Arena achieved a waste diversion rate of 87 percent.

The Territorial Cup® matchup created 656 pounds and 708 pounds of recycled and compostable materials, respectively, while just 197 pounds of trash was sent to the landfill. Arizona State is reporting the rate as a part of the RecycleMania Game Day Basketball Challenge.

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Today is the United Nations' World Day of Social Justice. In recognition, UCLA's David Eisenman discusses how a social justice framework is the way forward for work in both resilience and sustainability.

A Thought Leader Series Piece

By David Eisenman

Note: February 20, 2014, is the United Nations’ World Day of Social Justice. The goal of the observance is to remove barriers people face due to gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion, culture, or disability. Dr. David Eisenman’s expertise is in public health and disasters.

In their book, “Resilience – Why Things Bounce Back,” authors Andrew Zolli and Ann Marie Healy argue that it’s time for sustainability to move over and make room for resilience.

Suddenly it seems to me that the whole world is talking about sustainability and resilience. In the field of disasters – my field – both are important concepts, complementary to each other and worthy of action and resources.

But frequently missing from the discussion is one of the most important determinants of sustainability and resilience – social justice. Social justice is central to both.

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Sustainability scientist Jianguo Wu delivered a keynote presentation at a Socio-Environmental Synthesis Research Proposal Writing Workshop, hosted in Annapolis, Md., by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center in January.

The themes of the event, “Cities in Sustainable Resource Management” and “Surprise in Human Adaptation to Environmental Change,” were selected as examples of dynamic, complex socio-environmental problems that require the collaboration of disparate fields—from urban planning to oceanography and data science to human psychology—to begin to solve.

Dr. Wu is a Dean's Distinguished Professor of Sustainability Science, and his research areas include landscape ecology, urban ecology, biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and sustainability science.

ASU's Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes has added a new location for its popular Science Outside the Lab program that began in Washington DC more than a decade ago. The event will be held Monday, May 19 through Friday, May 23, 2014. Applications are due by March 15.

The program introduces students to the relationships among science, technology and innovation policies, and the societal outcomes in places where important decisions are made. During the new one-week workshop—now offered in Phoenix—students meet and interact with decision makers who fund, regulate, and shape innovation and critique, publicize and study science, including patent attorneys, insurers, venture capitalists, city and state officials, lobbyists, consultants, regulators, journalists, and others.

Science Outside the Lab

The long-running Washington, DC science policy immersion program returns for the Summer of 2014. Graduate students in science and engineering who are interested in how decisions about science and innovation funding, regulation and policy are made will benefit from this program. Students with an interest in careers in science policy will also find this to be an excellent opportunity to learn about important fellowships and meet current science and innovation policy professionals.

Sustainability scientist Netra Chhetri leads an interdisciplinary team of scholars and practitioners working on a project in western Nepal to help farmers adapt effectively to climatic change. The team includes representatives from ASU, University of Hawaii, Local Initiatives for Biodiversity Research and Development (a Nepali NGO), Regional Directorates of the Department of Livestock Services, Western Region, and the Regional Agriculture Research Station, Lumle (agricultural and livestock research and extension agencies of the Government of Nepal), and Agriculture and Forest University (a Nepali university).

Chhetri’s three-year project, Adaptive Pathways to Climate Change (APaCC): Livestock and Livelihood Systems in Gandaki River Basin, examines the adaptive capacity of farmers and livestock keepers vulnerable to climate and other livelihood stressors, and links this understanding to locally relevant climate adaptation methods in the Gandaki River Basin. His research advances understanding of how a society’s adaptive capacity to climate variability and change is shaped by the geographical region’s social, political, institutional and biophysical contexts. He commented, “We believe that carefully generated and user-driven knowledge enhances the capacity of farmers to adapt to the threat posed by climate and other ongoing changes.”

Ask Isabelle Lishewski what her favorite part of being a student at Arizona State University is and pat comes the reply, “Telling my Sun Devil story to a group of high school students and their families while walking backwards during a campus tour.”

The Toledo, Ohio native considers her Sun Devil story nothing short of a serendipitous journey thus far.

As a student worker at the Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives, Lishewski has been a participant, as well as witness to the hard work that has gone into organizing the first-ever Sustainability Solutions Festival. The event is one of WSSI’s eight programs designed to support sustainability research, develop solutions, build a global sustainability network, and groom the next generation of sustainability leaders.

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What role does pre-existing vulnerability play for people who experience a climate shock? Does it amplify the effect of the climate shock, or is the effect negligible?

Four Arizona State University archaeologists are looking into this as part of an international team examining how people can be most resilient to climate change when it comes to food security.

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In an attempt to inform policy conversations around wastewater use in Arizona, Arizona State University’s Decision Center for a Desert City (DCDC) this week released a new technical report. The report, Water Reuse in Central Arizona was authored by Ariane Middel, Ray Quay, and Dave White and explores issues critical to water reuse, along with challenges and opportunities for the future.

Covering topics including existing and projected wastewater supply and demand, potential for increased competition and costs, the role of public perceptions, and industrial perspectives, the report highlights issues vital to the water sustainability of Arizona and presents a framework to address public policy issues.

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Lawrence Krauss, an Arizona State University Foundation Professor in the School of Space and Earth Exploration and the Department of Physics, has been elected to the International Academy of Humanists.

The academy, which includes Nobel laureates James Watson and Steven Weinberg, sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson and author Salman Rushdie as members, is limited to 80 persons. It was established in 1983 to recognize distinguished humanists and to disseminate humanistic ideals and beliefs. Once elected, laureates are members for life.

Members of the academy are committed to free inquiry in all fields of human endeavor, a scientific outlook and the use of the scientific method in acquiring knowledge and promotion of humanist ethical values and principles.

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It is no surprise that CAP alumni (students, post-docs, faculty, and staff) who have moved on to other places continue to be engaged in research and dialogue about urban ecology. Some recent activity on the Web involved CAP alumni discussing aspects of biodiversity in the city.

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/urban_nature_how_to_foster_biodiversity_in_worlds_cities/2725/ Recent post on Yale Environment 360 that includes comments by former CAP post-doc Madhu Katti and former CAP Ph.D. student Susannah Lerman.

http://www.thenatureofcities.com/ Rotating blog forum about cities as ecosystems, featuring former CAP post-docs Madhu Katti and Mark Hostetler.

http://theconversation.com/biodiversity-can-flourish-on-an-urban-planet-18723 Posting by former CAP post-doc  Madhu Katti on biodiversity in cities.